Denial and Vengeance
by ZacharyTobiasSpicer
Summary: When one Swat Kat dies what is the other left feeling? And how do the citizens of MegaKat City suffer? Two oneshots with an overdone idea.
1. Denial

Jake stood in the hall and stared at Chance's door sadly. His teary eyes studied the very grain of the wood and his thoughts were silent. He had nothing to feel. He wanted to feel nothing. He reached out slowly for the doorknob but as his fingertips touched the cool metal he pulled back as though it were on fire. He stared in surprise at his own reaction. He lowered his hand and head. He turned his eyes away and went about his day.

As the sun began to set he returned to the hall and put a hand to his chest. He gripped his shirt and felt his mind empty once again. He didn't want to think. He just wanted to stare. He would think tomorrow. He would feel tomorrow. He turned from Chance's door and made his way towards his own with drooped shoulders. He would feel tomorrow. He knew he would as he fell onto his bed and curled into himself.

In the morning he did not let himself stare at Chance's door. It would be the first time in weeks that he didn't. Today he would not feel. He went to work and he went to bed. He would not let himself dwell at the entrance to Chance's room. He would not let himself dwell on the reason it remained closed to him. He would never let himself feel again. He would never open that door. Never again.

As his lonely days turned into months Jake felt himself grow hollow within. He felt it and yet he would not acknowledge it. Callie would visit from time to time but the cold expression on his face discouraged her. He simply sat in the garage and worked on gadgets he knew he would never use. He would start with the thought that this new invention would be a great addition to the TurboKat. He would finish with a defeated sigh. Callie stopped coming.

He no longer watched the news. He knew he would not answer the calls of a city in need. He knew he would not feel the guilt he should for abandoning them. If Chance were here... Jake turned his eyes from the blank screen of a television he never watched. He stood from his slouched position on the couch and dragged himself down the hall. He would go to sleep early tonight. He stopped at his door and turned.

His eyes landed on Chance's door and he felt himself overcome with emotion. He did not want to feel but today he would. He took slow, heavy steps towards the room he had been avoiding for nearly a year. He placed his hand on the knob but did not pull away. He turned it slowly and as the door swung to his eyes filled with tears he had fought so hard to hold back.

Chance's room was just as he had left it. There were clothes strewn about the floor and a few empty milk cans on his bedside table. His bed was a mess of blankets and pillows. Jake walked over slowly and sat on the disheveled bed gently. Chance was the most restless sleeper he had ever known. He couldn't stay still for five minutes. Jake's hands gripped the sheets. His claws ripped through the soft blankets and pierced the mattress. Tears spilled over his cheeks and there was a choking sensation in his throat. He squeezed his eyes shut but try as he might the tears pushed their way through.

Chance was dead and he would never return. He had been fooling himself this entire time. Somewhere in the back of his mind he had been trying to believe that Chance was locked away in this room. Now that the room was revealed to be empty Chance was truly gone. He released his grip on the sheets and fell into the pile of pillows in the center of Chance's bed. His acute sense of smell could pick up all the aromas that made up Chance's unique scent. He pulled a pillow close to his face and let his tears soak into the cushion to wash it away.

His stomach felt empty and a wave of nausea washed over him. He could only bury his face further into the soft fortress of Chance's scent as he tried not to relive the tragic moment when Chance ceased to be. He had stared in horror as Chance's hand slammed down on the eject button. It had not been the one for his own seat. He had chosen to eject Jake first. Jake wondered if there hadn't been enough time for him to eject. Or had he wanted to save his precious jet? He would never know. He could only remember staring down from above as he watched the TurboKat hit Enforcer Headquarters.

When they recovered Chance's body they had discovered his true identity. But they had not discovered Razor's. Jake knew that Feral would have guessed who he was after finding Chance but he never came after him. This would have surprised him if he had not been so devoured by grief. He was glad for this unexpected kindness, however. He had sat in the garage and waited for them to arrest him for some time before realizing they wouldn't. That was when he decided to carry on with his life. His lonely, pained existence.

He sighed and felt his breath hitch in his throat. He could almost feel a hand on his shoulder. He turned to look but the room was empty. The sun was setting outside the window and Jake knew he should go to bed. However, he could not find it in himself to leave the room that had once belonged to his partner. He buried himself in the bedding and inhaled Chance's scent. If he closed his eyes he could pretend he was there. As he drifted off to sleep he heard a voice whisper in his ear.

_"See ya, Sure Shot."_


	2. Vengeance

Rage. It was all T-bone felt anymore. He had been so full of hatred and anger since the disappearance of Razor. He had come to find his own reputation as the only remaining Swat Kat and it was not quite as flattering as it had once been. He was seen by everyone now as Feral had always seen him. A reckless, danger to society. This fact burned him up inside but he could not deny the truth. He did not have the eagle eyes of his former partner so his aim was sometimes a little off. It sometimes caused civilian casualties but to onlookers T-bone didn't seem to care. As long as he killed the enemy nothing else mattered. There were no more prisoners. Only corpses.

As he finished off another adversary he swooped over the commander who was shaking his fist at him as usual. T-bone gave him a glare as he shot past and headed for the garage. He landed and hopped out of the dinged jet. It no longer shone in the light as he protected an appreciative city. It was grimy and and heavy with battle wounds from both enemy and ally enforcers. Just as he himself had come to be. He tossed his helmet behind him and ground his teeth as he changed back into his civilian clothes. His eyes refused to land on the locker next to his own. Refused to trail over the letters to Jake's codename etched into the steel.

He returned to the living area and sat on the edge of the couch, wringing his paws with a growl in the back of his throat. The TV stared back at him through the gaping hole in the monitor. The news, he remembered, could not stop showing the footage. The news couldn't stop asking what had happened to their saviors. They went on and on as he himself tried to answer their questions until he could take it no longer. He hadn't bothered to replace it but he didn't need to be entertained by childish cartoons anymore. He had to use every waking second to think. It played through his mind over and over again. Every morning, every night and even in his dreams. He had to find some ray of hope or clue. If he kept going back to it he knew he would find something that indicated who was really deserving of all this rage.

They had been chasing someone new. Someone neither T-bone nor Razor had ever encountered before or so they had thought at the time. Now he knew it had to be someone out to destroy them as a team. After going over it so many times there were no longer any doubts in his mind. They had executed the attack so expertly, splitting them up and leaving them vulnerable. Leaving Razor vulnerable. T-bone had stayed above with the jet to give Razor a bird's eye view as he searched out the enemy on his cyclotron. But as he disappeared into a tunnel T-bone lost sight of his partner. It would be the last he'd see of Razor. His suspicions still laid with Dark Kat but he had no proof. Then again, Dark Kat was still the only Omega that escaped his razor sharp vengeance at every turn.

The Metallikats had been the first to go. T-bone ripped them to pieces and crushed their heads in his still fresh rage. This brutal slaughter of the mechanized kats had not come as much of a shock to the citizens of MegaKat City because the two were not considered to be living. He had never suspected the Metallikats of course but he had to take his frustrations out on someone. They just happened to be the first to get in his way. The next to go down had been Viper who T-bone had truly suspected for some time. However, as he was torturing him for the truth he'd come to find that the mutated Kat had no idea what he was babbling about. So he let him die. This had been the first act of murder to tarnish his record. It would not be the last.

He turned his eyes on the Pastmaster but the undead creature escaped into the past at the sight of his fangs and claws. The little gnome was smart enough to know when to retreat. Turmoil wasn't so lucky. When she escaped from prison T-bone surprised her with his cruelty. She even begged for her life when she saw she had no chance of escape. T-bone tried to convince himself that this incident was simple self-defense. She had attacked him first. He continued to remind himself of this but no one else would buy it. He had murdered her. Just as he would murder every other criminal he went after. Their crime did not matter. Every villain received the same punishment. Death.

But Dark Kat kept getting away. Somehow the cowardly old Kat kept getting away. It drove him insane and the more the bastard evaded him the more he came to believe that he was the one who had killed Razor. He was the one who had buried his best friend beneath stone and metal, crushing the breath from his lungs. He was the one who had forced Chance to remove Jake's corpse from the wreckage under the watchful eye of the media. That cowardly Kat was the one who had forced Jake into an unmarked grave behind the garage! Chance slammed his fist down on the coffee table and it shattered beneath the force. He placed his paws on his head and squeezed as he tried not to cry. He could feel his claws piercing his skin and lowered his head to his knees.

"I'll kill 'em." Chance growled. "I swear, Jake, I'll kill 'em all!"

His right hand left his head and smashed into the lamp on the table beside him. It hit the wall and exploded in a shower of glass and sparks. Chance's arms lowered slowly and his head hung limply. He stared at the floor as he went through it in his mind one more time. He watched the explosion fill the tunnel one more time. He watched as the walls fell inward just one more time. Chance felt something cold slide down his cheek, finding it's way through his fur. He fell to his side and curled up on the couch as the night fell around him. He stared into the darkness and watched him smile just one more time. Chance closed his eyes as the anger left him for the moment but could not smile at the memory, knowing the rage would return in the morning.


End file.
